How Digital Advertising Balances Compliance and Collaboration for Highly Regulated Products

For some industries digital advertising is just as, if not more complicated than traditional. Particularly those in highly-regulated industries with lots of rules on how and what information is presented, or industries with unseen products that aren’t sold on consumer-facing storefronts or shelves. 

For example, we recently worked with a brand that sells medical devices. Medical devices are highly regulated, both in terms of consumer applications but also in advertising content. Additionally, many medical devices are products that are literally unseen by consumers as they implant in the body. In some cases, the question of brand never even arises. This particular brand sold devices used in plastic surgery, thereby advertising the device was also a method of gaining new patients. Nobody picks plastic surgery implants off a store shelf. They have to be recommended by and purchased through a medical doctor.

So for those counting that’s: 

1. Highly regulated industry with lots of rules and how and what information is presented 
2. Products are unseen, not sold on any consumer-facing storefront or shelf
3. To purchase the product you must go through a Medical Doctor

The brand had a simple goal: find a way to promote the surgical procedure requiring the medical device on social media that was inclusive of both the device brand and their physician network. A perfect mix for collaborative advertising, we designed a social program that worked across all stakeholders. 

Empowering Busy Physicians

It started by first leveraging the medical device sales team, our gateway to the physicians. Brand sales reps would introduce the concept of a Collaborative Advertising Program, in which physicians can access the Tiger Pistol Platform to publish on-brand campaigns for the brand’s medical devices. The campaigns would run from the physician’s local Facebook Page, feature brand creative, and drive consultation bookings with the physician. Busy physicians would be able to launch campaigns at their discretion in an easy to use portal, the sign up and publishing process taking no longer than 10 minutes end-to-end.

Compliant Always

Compliance is never an issue during any step of the process, as every screen and piece of content the physician sees is already in a pre-approved state. Our solution being specially designed to ensure physicians could not launch non-compliant content by controlling editing and upload options on campaigns. This approach ensured their campaign launch process would be quick, and not bogged down by outside approvals or reviews.

A New Process for Success

Designing the program in this way ensured we could get highly relevant, and actionable, consumer facing content published through physicians. While also providing an innovative way for the sales team to start conversations and for the physicians to leverage their expertise in driving business for themselves.